Saturday, May 6, 2017

Since 1945, Moscow has Been Involved in a Military Action on Average Every Two Years

Paul
Goble

Staunton, May 6 – Among the many
messages the Kremlin wants Russians to take away from its celebrations of Victory
Day is that Moscow has arranged things so that they have lived in peace for 72
years. But in fact, Arkady Babchenko points out, the Kremlin has involved the
country in military operations on average once every two years over that
period.

The Moscow commentator offers a
useful list (echo.msk.ru/blog/thequestion_ru/1975802-echo/) for those who
have forgotten that tragic reality. From 1945 to the mid-1950s, Moscow engaged
in operations against the forest brothers on the territory of the USSR that
Stalin had absorbed as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Then, it did
the following:

·In
1946, Soviet forces provided military assistance to the Chinese Communists in
Manchuria.

·In
2014, Russian forces invaded and annexed Crimea and occupied part of the
Donbass.

·In
2015, Russian forces became involved in Syria.

And this listing does not include the 1962
Caribbean crisis or Moscow’s peacekeeping operations under UN auspices in
Sierra Leon, Sudan, Burundi, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Liberia, Chad and
Angola, Babchenko points out.

But even leaving those out, he concludes, “the
USSR and Russia in one or another degree took part in approximately 30
conflicts, that is, one war every two years,” a pattern that is hardly
consistent with Moscow’s claims about peace since 1945. And it took losses:
17,000 killed in Soviet times, and an unknown but mounting number in Russian
ones.